THE REV. Randy Maynard yesterday admitted to committing a crime of the cloth.

He can’t find the spiritual power to forgive Ronald Shanabarger for the sin of murder in the cruel suffocation death of his 7-month-old son Tyler.

And Maynard, the chaplain for the Franklin Police Department, isn’t taking his spiritual lapse lightly.

“It goes against everything that is Christian,” said the Baptist minister, who admits he has had trouble sleeping due to the dilemma. “I’m going through a real hard time, because I know Jesus would have forgiven him.

“I’ve been a minister since 1974, I’ve seen all types of crimes – beatings, rapes, murders of children, but I’ve never seen anything so horrible as this,” said Maynard, father of a 3-year-old boy.

“It makes me sick to my stomach.”

Maynard has a right to be irked by Ronald Shanabarger. He was called Father’s Day morning to console Ronald and Amy Shanabarger inside their immaculate one-story home, filled with investigators.

Amy Shanabarger was a wreck – she was shaking and crying. At first, her husband appeared emotional, later changing gears, asking if his son had really died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

“I just prayed with him – I held him in my arms and prayed.”

Maynard and the Shanabargers walked into Tyler’s room – brightly decorated with Looney Tunes characters – before workers from the Medical Examiner’s office placed the boy in a body bag.

Standing over the baby’s crib, Maynard used his thick arms to hold the couple. Maynard remembers Ronald Shanabarger asking, “Is the baby’s face blue?” and “Is the boy going to be in heaven?”

“Yes,” said Maynard, trying his best to comfort the grief-stricken mother, who was crying uncontrollably. Maynard wanted to be strong for the couple, but standing there, gazing at the tiny corpse lying on its side in pajamas, brought him near tears.

Maynard even called the Shanabargers the next night to make sure they were OK.

Two days later, Maynard was rushing to the Johnson County Jail, where Ronald Shanabarger had confessed to suffocating the child, covering the baby’s face with plastic wrap, in a macabre act of revenge against his wife.

There he found Amy Shanabarger, trying to get up the nerve to tell her father, Robert Parsons, that her husband was responsible for the horrible act.

Maynard called Parsons. “I told him to pull his truck over, because I had something to tell him,” Maynard said.

“There was no easy way to say it. I just told him what had happened.”

Maynard was doing his job, which also included complying with Ronald Shanabarger’s request to speak to him.

“Do you want me to handcuff him?” a jail guard asked.

“No. I’m not afraid of him,” Maynard said.

Inside the jail, Maynard refused to shake Ronald’s hand. The reverend, a pleasant man who speaks with a deep Midwestern twang, expected Ronald Shanabarger to show remorse.

But the killer didn’t.

Ronald Shanabarger was more concerned about himself – as if the baby never existed.

“I was blown away by his cold, callused heart,” the reverend said.

“He was worried about being raped in jail, if he was going to be alone, and the amount of time he would be spending there.”

Then Maynard began to realize that Ronald Shanabarger never referred to his son by name. He would use words like “baby,” “the boy,” or “him.”